To begin with, the New Orleans that tourists see -- the New Orleans that makes people visit -- has not been destroyed. In fact, the French Quarter was remarkably undamaged by the storm itself or the flooding afterwards. Probably the most damage that has been done to the French Quarter has been the loss of the tourists, who have for one reason or another not come to the city in the numbers they once had. The major tourist hotels surrounding Canal Street are fully functional, so it's not a question of room availability.
However, whole neighborhoods have been destroyed. The houses are there, but they're so heavily damaged that they're unliveable, and with the destruction of the neighborhoods there's been a ripple effect: the loss of population, the loss of small businesses set up to serve the local population, the loss of large retail to serve the local population, the loss of jobs that all those businesses provided, and on up. This mall is one example:
I didn't get a shot of it, but there was also a huge Wal*Mart building shuttered up, another victim of the storm and the devastation of the neighborhoods it served. You know it's bad when a vulture like Wal*Mart can't re-open.
Block after block, in section after section, homes are abandoned. Some are visibly damaged from the storm, but others look as if they're simply empty (except in many cases for the tell-tale sign of a high water mark on the siding or brick). Nearly all have the spray-paint marks familiar to those of us who watched the post-Katrina coverage. The spray-paint indicates the date it was searched, the agency searching, and the results of the search. Sometimes short messages are also painted on the houses.
But New Orleans is resilient, even with fewer people and fewer tourists. The population that's there dearly love their city, but they aren't terribly excited about the help they've gotten from federal or state agencies. We should also remember that one of the Bush Administration's most forceful steps in "rebuilding" the area was to suspend union work rules so that construction corporations could undercut the union wages and boost their profits -- this sort of corporate giveaway is the only sort of financial help Bush understands.
3 comments:
Thank you for the report. Americans need to know the incompetence, waste, cruelty and lying of this administration. I am a Republican New Orleans native and it disgusts me that this is the way America treats its own countrymen. Billions spent? Show me where. The same is true on the MS Gulf Coast, so it is not just the inept state and local government that is the problem. Everyday the news is bad. Todays nugget-hundreds of students turned away from the schools. No room at the inn. So there is no public schooling available to all the citizens.
I'll be at Jazz Fest this year, all 10 days. I missed last year for the first time in a decade. I wish I'd been able to go and support the city and its rebuilding efforts. This year's going to be great- the just announced a killer lineup.
Thank you for a balanced, realistic look at New Orleans. I loved it when KOB published pics of the parts of the city NOT devastated right after the storm.
It's a magical location. I feel certain the city will find its way back to robustness with or without federal help. The current administration is so awful, in every way, in every single way.
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